WHAT TO BRING: Your favourite writing materials. Photo of hands. Carolyn Forché Anthology if you have one.

STORM CATCHING: WRITING IN AND ABOUT HARD TIMES

What? A PEP WRITING WORKSHOP WITH laura apol

When? 10am – 3pm | Saturday, april 7, 2018

Where? A comfortable private residence. Please bring a bag lunch and your own cup. Registrants will be given directions

About

Writers often use writing to give voice to the difficulties in their lives, but also to name the pain and injustice they see in the world around them. In this workshop, we will read and write pieces that translate hardship into healing and art.

Laura Apol teaches creative writing and literature at Michigan State University. For more than twenty years, she has led creative writing workshops in local, national and international contexts for writers of all skill levels. She is the author of several award-winning collections of her own poems, including Falling into Grace (1998), and Crossing the Ladder of Sun (2004). Requiem, Rwanda (2015) was drawn from her work that used writing to facilitate healing among survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi.

WITH FRENZIED MOUTH

What? A PEP WRITING WORKSHOP WITH SUSAN STENSON

When? 10 – 2| Saturday, October 21, 2017

Where? A comfortable private residence. Registrants will be given directions

For Whom? For new writers, you’ll have a chance to hit the ground running. For those with more experience, we'll focus on juxtaposition, navigating narrative for constructive leaps, celebrating surprise and withholding through image, line break and rhythm.

For information and registration please contact Barbara Pelman at barbarapelman@gmail.com.

Please use subject line: SUSAN STENSON WORKSHOP

MONEY MATTERS:Your $60 cheque will hold your place.Please make cheque out to Planet Earth Poetry.E-transfer to pepoetry2@gmail.comCancellation policy: No refunds after October 16.

Writing & Environmental Witnessa retreat led by jan zwicky

April 23 – 28, 2017Honeymoon Bay Lodge and Retreat Centre

Writing & Environmental Witness is a multi-genre intensive designed to support writers working on the front lines of environmental witness. Witness is exemplified in actions like those of Vedran Smailovic, “the cellist of Sarajevo,” who played elegies in the ruined buildings of his city during the siege in the early ’90s. It is an attempt to give accurate voice to the moral, emotional and aesthetic dimensions of a catastrophe, as well as to the facts; and thus it speaks human truth to faceless technocratic power. Environmental witness can take almost any form in writing, from haiku to five-volume histories; its emotional tone can range from grief to celebration, from terror to serenity, from rage to joy. Its essence is a serious engagement with the natural world which unfolds within an acknowledgment – oblique or direct – of damage to or lack or care for that world. Each participant will present work-in–progress and consult one-on-one with the presenter to develop a reading list relevant to their project.

The workshop begins Sunday afternoon April 23 and concludes Friday morning April 28.

Because enrolment is limited the application process involves submitting a writing sample of your environmental writing for review and acceptance. Participants will be notified on February 20, 2017 of their acceptance. To receive the full prospectus and workshop outline please EMAIL Planet Earth Poetry and put Writing Intensive in the subject line.